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Dress up your windows in spring and summer with window boxes filled with flowers and green plants. Window boxes brighten the inside of your home as well as the outside. Turn a few well-chosen plants in your favorite colors into a miniature garden that is as close as your window.

Rock Garden Box

You can create a small, alpine landscape in your window box by designing your garden around two large rocks. Saxifrage (Saxifrage spp.) and trailing phlox (Phlox adsurgens) are good flowering plants for this box. The saxifrage is the more upright of the two plants and looks best in the back of the box and toward the middle. Use two or three plants to make the box look full. Trailing phlox drapes over the side of the box, so plant it near the front and on the sides. Plant hens and chicks (Sempervivum tectorum) around one rock and stonecrop (Sedum spathulifolium) around the other. This box shows best from the outside when placed no higher than slightly above eye level. It blooms from mid spring until midsummer in mild climates and until early summer where summers are hot.

Yellow and Gold

Yellow petunias (Petunia spp) and gold African marigolds (Tagetes erecta) make a sunny display in south-facing window boxes. Choose African marigold varieties that grow 18-to-24 inches tall. Some types can reach a height of 4 feet. Both of these flowers need regular deadheading to keep the flowers coming. Lutea (Monopsis lutea), with dainty gold flowers and fine-textured foliage, is a trailing plant that tumbles over the front of the box and softens the effect of the coarse-textured annuals. If you can't find this trailer, substitute white lobelia (lobelia spp.).

Pink Palette

Pink flowers in a range of shades make a lovely window box. Look for plants that are already blooming so you can blend your colors and check the mature size of the cultivar to determine where they will best fit into your box. Ivy geraniums have attractive foliage and come in several shades of deep and medium pink. Diascia (Diascia barberae) has three-quarter-inch pink flowers, sometimes with darker pink centers. The flowers bloom on stems that rise about 6 inches above the foliage. Verbena (Verbena X hybrid) produces horizontal stems with delicate flowers and foliage that extends over the sides of the box. Horned violets (Viola cornuta) with deep lavender flowers add depth to the color scheme. Use pink lobelia (lobelia spp.) as a finishing touch in the front of the box.

Woodland Box

A woodland box thrives in shady locations. Plant three or four small ferns (various species) with different types of foliage randomly around the box and tuck in flowering plants so that the box looks natural. Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) form clumps of grassy foliage. The flowers grow on stalks that arise from the center of the plant. Anemone (Anemone blanda) grows less than 6 inches tall with daisy-like flowers. You can start your own plants from bulbs or purchase potted plants. Lily-of-the-valley sends up stalks of intensely fragrant, white flowers from between thick, wide leaves that contrast with the other foliage in the box. The flowering plants in this box bloom in spring. You'll need to keep the soil moist at all times.

About the Author

Jackie Carroll has been a freelance writer since 1995. Her home-and-garden and nature articles have appeared in "Birds & Blooms" and "Alamance Today." She holds a Bachelor of Science in medical technology from the University of North Carolina.